


foggy bottom

by strato



Category: Carmen Sandiego (Cartoon 2019)
Genre: Gen, Government stuff, basically i move my ocs like they're barbie dolls and make em talk abt stuff, idk - Freeform, roundabout is mentioned hoo hoo hee hee, this is the most. guilty pleasure thing ive ever done in my entire life, vile agents - Freeform, yea like. thats the focal point, yeah there’s a buncha random characters mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:20:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28336047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strato/pseuds/strato
Summary: she’s laughing. braithewaite’s fucked and she’s laughing.
Kudos: 11





	foggy bottom

**Author's Note:**

> in my self indulgence of the century, i throw my ocs like dice into the cs plotline. good luck i say

“ _Mon Dieu_ , Bordeaux, get a grip on the damn brief!”

Montecarlo’s voice was almost inaudible over the deafening engines of Air Force Two, the wind whipping up her short blonde hair in all directions. She shielded her eyes with a hand and meticulously made her way down the ever-steep stairs of the plane. She allowed herself to breathe a sigh of relief once her heels hit the tarmac, a sure surface compared to the rather perilous stairs that had taken the dignity of so many.

The ever formal Secretary of State Elisa Montecarlo only managed to lamely salute the two Marines that stood on each side of the stairs, never moving, statues of their own. She only donned the ornate title while she held her job—once stepping foot on VILE island, the name was simply discarded, Elisa taking on the codename Double Cross. She half-jogged to the Secret Service agent just a few paces ahead, dark glasses doing an exceptionally shoddy job at hiding the pure mortified look that she carried. 

Extending a hand for the all-too-precious black briefcase, Special Agent Bordeaux gave it to her with a fearful look, surely anticipating the consequence that would arise after almost dropping the case 25 feet down from the plane door. The Secretary made it a high priority to explain in unfiltered detail what would happen if even a scratch afflicted the case, and almost splattering its contents on the asphalt below like guts was enough to fire the agent. Hell, she'd do it on the spot if the President had the gall and didn't take pity on every living thing in the White House.

The thought of grabbing the agent by the collar flashed past her mind. If it wasn’t for the stiff Vice President following her footsteps, with the Second Gentleman clutching her hand clad in that tacky smile that she despised, Montecarlo would have. No doubt, no hesitation. The Secretary ached with desire to yank the pristine fabric, but she clenched her fist instead. Her nails made stinging indents in her palm.

Montecarlo snatched the briefcase, looking at Bordeaux right in her eyes. Glasses, for that matter. She could hardly see the agent’s hazel orbs beneath the opaque aviators that rendered all emotion null (or were supposed to, at least).

“Happy to know that these highly crucial files of Belgian national intelligence are in secure hands,” Montecarlo scoffed with saturated sarcasm, voice still raised over the engines. She narrowed her own icy eyes in a nonverbal cue to join the VP, and Bordeaux did without a second thought. Montecarlo waved over another fresh batch of Secret Service agents who escorted her to an awaiting motorcade, each glossy jet black car’s finish reflecting the standby sirens of police motorcycles. 

“...like they trust you after the fuck-up in Boise? _Ja, kompis_ , you’ll be lucky if he brings you back for his second term–”

The uncharacteristically bubbly conversation between two agents after Montecarlo swung open the door of the Cadillac (which for some reason smelled like Seville oranges) came to a grinding halt, turning the warm inside into a pool of ice. Mainly because of the frigid air that managed to seep in while the door was open, but it was the Secretary’s unnerving presence that had the agents sneaking in clandestine glances through the rearview mirror.

“Mrs. Secretary,” one of the suits said in a mild Swedish accent; the question was an attempt at friendliness patterned with clear wary tones. “I take it you had a great summit in Belgium?” 

“It was eventful.” She said no other words as she took out her phone, switching it off from airplane mode. Four missed calls, one unread message. 

All from her husband.

With an exasperated roll of her eyes, Montecarlo opened the message.

_Forgot you were on the plane. Call me as soon as you reach Foggy Bottom if Gunnar doesn’t call you first._

Montecarlo knitted her eyebrows, gaze looking through the windows at the blur of streetlights rushing past, highly contrasted against the tinted orange sky. She wasn’t exactly sure what Maelstrom needed from her, deliberating along the way through D.C. that it must have been a new lead on Sandiego. The icy tips of her fingers attempted to warm themselves up in her palms. Though, the inevitable snake weighed leaden in her stomach, knotted worries that bunched themselves up. She couldn’t have made a mistake; every plan of hers was devised with such meticulousness, with such precision that it was impossible to screw up anything. Blurred faces from pedestrians sneaking a glance rushed by.

Snapped out of her aquarium of thoughts by the car making its stop, Montecarlo laid her head back in the seat and closed her eyes. She’d deal with it when she dealt with it. 

Once in her office with the doors and blinds sealed shut, she felt the heavy blanket of jet lag seep into every weary bone. As part of her job, it was a common occurrence, but she could never find herself accustoming to it. Nobody really ever could.

Her office was cold, as always. The Secretary wrapped her coat tighter around her waist, although it really couldn’t go any farther than it was. 

Montecarlo ran her fingers across the smooth Italian leather of her chair, the emblazoned seal of the Department of the State burning into her eyes from the computer as files were transferred from a flash drive. It was the very one Bordeaux almost dropped like the reigning queen of klutzes. Her mind was incredibly foggy, but she managed to remember to call her husband back after making a cup of coffee from the small coffee maker in the back of her office.

“Well there, good afternoon swe–”

“What the hell happened?” The words tumbled from her lips faster than she could think coherently, a hand on her forehead as she leaned on her olive desk.

“Looks like I can’t even give a proper greeting, huh?” He replied back after a few-second pause, with a chuckle in that buttery voice that made her want to crumble like a pastry since the day they met. That stupid laugh.

Montecarlo pinched the bridge of her nose. “Ben, I’m sorry, I..” Her eyes flicked to the computer screen, which was barely on 3% file transfer completion. “...It’s been a long, long flight, the terminal was–wait, ‘good afternoon’?”

“Ah. Yeah, I’m in Hong Kong for the week.” He explained it as if for the first time. Often she wished some of his patience was able to rub off on her. Her husband, a prominent actor (and fellow espionage operative), was often off for some months in exotic locations depending on his schedule. Montecarlo always knew, obviously, though in the midst of her brain fog she couldn't remember where he was this time—Cabo, Prague, all distant locations in her mind. Benjamin Harris was nary a stranger to traveling, as was she.

“Don’t even worry about it,” Ben interjected as silence came from her end, “I know that kind of big ass jet lag is not a fun partner to have. How was Belgium, by the way?” Montecarlo felt a pang of guilt at the fact that he managed to remember where she was, though she shook it off.

“The summit was decent. The Minister of Foreign Affairs was chattier than I’d expect, and some tycoon that tagged along was caught getting rather… handsy with one of the chefs. Nothing is ever as interesting as the NATO, if I’m going to be honest.” She stood up with a slight wince and peered outside from her office, the fog it was so well-known for blanketing the streets. “The NATO is where the real action happens.” The NATO was make or break for many foreign affairs leaders; luckily the worst that’s happened to Elisa was the time a reporter asked how things were going and she’d replied with “chill” (her stepson had sneakily suggested the idea, and like an oblivious idiot she followed).

Their conversation, although welcome to Montecarlo’s ears, was too uncomfortably tranquil for the urgently connotated text and missed calls Ben had given. Her heart rate hitched up slightly when her line of sight landed on a red figure ambling on the sidewalk, only to have it turn sideways to reveal a well-dressed man crossing the street. She closed her eyes and sighed. 

“But you and I both know that querying about the summit wasn’t your whole objective, no?” After taking a few sips of the scalding coffee she felt much more awake than before, although with the impending knowledge that she wasn’t going to be able to sleep very well when the time came, but she was never more willing to make that sacrifice.

“....Give me a second.” Ben whispered from the other end. She heard a door shutting rather loudly and a lock twisting, counting a few seconds of silence before his voice rose up again. “I assume then that Gunnar hasn’t called you….?”

His normally permanent charming demeanor was replaced with a much more grave one that seldom ever reared its head. Montecarlo raised a fist to her chin, never tearing her astute state from the rapidly darkening streets. “Correct.”

“Elisa, what time did you leave the summit?”

She swallowed. “We were wrapped up at 3:00 p.m. Brussels time, and the flight back was around eight hours. I got back here precisely 4:45 EST. Why?”

“He got arrested.” Ben lowered his voice into a deep whisper, a sneer audible from her end. “Can you believe?”

 _“He?”_ Flooded with relief at the notification that it wasn’t anything to do with her, Montecarlo let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Ben, I need speci–”

“Roundabout. Man got the fucking irons.” The singular sentence hit her with the magnitude of a train—she didn’t feel the phone slipping from her grasp and hitting the floor, not even bothering to immediately pick it up. She crouched, but never looked down, mouth slightly agape. 

And she lets out a bark of a laugh.

She couldn’t fathom how Roundabout! one of the most cunning operatives VILE was able to boast! had been taken into custody? To believe this has supposedly gone down while she was stuck in the dreary summit with government officials that looked like they were falling asleep in their six-figure suits was something she couldn’t bring herself to digest. 

Her teeth dug into her inner cheek as the words and questions filled her mind akin to a swarm of bees, never able to grasp or make out a specific one. The only way she could rationalize the news was thinking that Ben must have heard a snippet of news and confused it with something else; she didn’t know. She didn’t know.

With an unsteady hand, Montecarlo brought the phone up to her ear again, where the faint chanting of Ben saying _hello? Elisa, you there?_ became more and more audible.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here–” Montecarlo turned around and walked rapidly back to her desk, a hand planted on her forehead as the initial wave of shock subsided to a dull presence at the front of her mind. “–just to be clear, we’re talking about the same Roundabout?” Her words are peppered with laughs. With nimble yet quavering fingers, she typed the words _Nigel Braithewaite_ into the search bar, switching the file transfer to a background activity. Oscillating between disbelief and taking his word for it, any doubts were quashed once the results appeared on the screen. The same job and life-killing title, the same unflattering photos.

“Jesus Christ.” Montecarlo echoed into the phone, leaning back in her chair and letting out a groan. “He’s going to wish he’d jumped off Big Ben, no?”

“That’s what I’d do,” Ben replied from the other side, “better dead on the floor below than getting the mind wipe. Complete with losing your job? I–I mean, what do you do with your life then?”

“Honestly, I expected you to at least laugh at the news.” He continued. “Come on, do it.” It was hardly a secret that Montecarlo and Braithewaite held a feud, tension always spreading thick when they were in the same room. Petty insults were always passed around like poker chips in the Monaco casinos of Elisa’s home country, but they were professionals. They acted like it.

Ill-wishing was something that never occurred between them, at least publicly. Montecarlo knew that she did it quietly, and certainly he did as well.

She didn’t mention she’d already had her short-lived single splice of a chuckle. “I’d freely laugh if I wasn’t the one going to clean up his mess. You know how it’s going to be.” It was her job, in short—to extradite operatives from other countries and get intel while she could, occasionally pulling strings for VILE. As Secretary of State, it all worked out swimmingly, many leaders of foreign nations not even batting an eye and simply letting her do her thing. Fools, the whole lot.

She reached for her porcelain mug of coffee, which was disgustingly lukewarm to the touch. “Shouldn’t be such a big deal for you,” Ben replied, “it’s basically muscle memory at this point. Right?”

The answer was yes, of course, but it wasn’t something Montecarlo had been expecting at this time. While the nauseating shock had ebbed off already, she was still left in a mental whirlpool of her own.

“I suppose you’re right,” She replied in a distant voice, not feeling quite there as the fluorescent computer screen burned her eyes in the dim light of the office. “Listen, Benji, I’m going to have to make a lot of calls, so I have to bid adieu–“

“ _Scheisse_ , ‘Lisa,” He snorted lightheartedly, “Getting rid of me that quick, I see. Break ends in a few anyway, call me in the morning?” Ben clicked his tongue.

“Yeah, yeah, will do. Love you.”

Even after he hung up, she still had the now warm phone screen pressed against her cheek, her eyes skimming every title over and over again.

“But how?” She breathed to no one in particular, scrolling through various articles: BBC, CNN, MSNBC, The Guardian. None of them held what she wanted to know, but it was blatantly obvious that the news sources had no knowledge of what had occurred in-depth, either. How did it all play out? What caused Nigel to slip up on his ways? And who, if anyone, was responsible for it?

Sandiego was certainly a candidate. She’d done it once with Neal in Venice; there was no downplaying the fact that she would do it again for the sake of her infantile morals.

Montecarlo felt the onset of a throbbing headache coming on, and with a sigh of vexation, unlocked and opened the small drawer at the bottom of her desk. The contents rattled loudly inside. 

She pulled out a discreet steel flask from inside and her VILE issued phone. One was for the headache, the other was to see if she’d been informed on Nigel’s situation. 

She took a long swig, welcoming the smoky burn of the exorbitant liquor down her throat. A knock on the far door of her office prompted her to quickly place the phone in her inner jacket pocket, brushing a few strands of stray hair with her fingernails. “Come in.” She bit sternly.

The door swung open, slightly grazing the American flag that sat situated beside the framed photo of Montecarlo shaking the Prime Minister of Ukraine’s hand, both officials with tight-lipped smiles and condescending squints. 

Standing in the doorway was a civil service employee with glasses that looked too comically large for their face, and a noticeable cowlick sticking out from their freshly gelled raven hair. They looked so stupidly naive. If it wasn’t for the identifying pass hanging around their neck and the fact that she’d had them come into her office a few times prior, Montecarlo would have chased them out.

“State your business.” She pinched the bridge of her nose harder.

“The consul applications you requested, Mrs. Secretary.” Upon opening her eyes, the blonde noticed the employee was stealing a glance at the flask that was still encompassed by the Secretary’s wiry hand. _Goddamn it._

“Thank you,” she said with eyes narrowed like chips of ice, nonverbally telling them that they’d know better than to snitch. “Please be a dear and get me England’s Secretary of State on the phone.”

“Of course. May I ask what the re–“

“Classified information.” Montecarlo hissed through gritted teeth. “Get on with it. And don’t tell the President—or any Cabinet members for that matter—that I did so until 10 a.m. tomorrow.” 

As soon as the door had been locked, and the employee’s footsteps went from mere pitter patters to nothing, the Secretary brought her VILE phone out, having only a few minutes to check it before the employee returned with the foreign Secretary on the line. 

Montecarlo glanced at the notification panel, clicking on the lone message that had been directly issued to her. Her breath caught in her throat as the words painstakingly manifested themselves on the screen.

A majority of the message was the same that she’d read on the news and expected, but one sentence stood out that had her take a white-knuckle grip on the edge of the desk.

_...operative Le Chevre made his way down the clock tower, later saying he saw Roundabout grappling with Shadowsan mere minutes before the arrest…_

She set her phone down rather hard on the desk and drained the whole flask in one swish. Good God. She’d found it droll how Maelstrom’s attempt at gaslighting Carmen on the train worked just about as well as using a butter knife to slit a throat. Each move made by the former Faculty member to sabotage a caper seemed to be the last straw, the last provocation. It was really only a matter of time before he’d end up like Wolfe, hunted by one agency or another.

Montecarlo had lazily directed the increase of Interpol surveillance in cities that were suspected to be hit by the two turncoats, though the incident on Guy Fawkes Night showed things were getting urgent; the snake was winding up around their throats. 

She fiddled with her ring. The file completion had finished long ago, but she never removed the flash drive. Since the Cleaners had already departed hours ago with Roundabout in their stringent custody, Montecarlo wouldn’t need to extradite him out of the country—she’d be mainly in charge of removing any incriminating evidence that would ostensibly be found in the event of an investigation by Parliament.

In the midst of approving and stamping the applications that had been delivered by the civil service employee, her head slowly perked up at the presence of a knock again. This time Montecarlo scrambled to take the phone and flask back into the wooden cabinet, letting out a _yes, enter_ as she did.

Through the frosted glass of her office door, she recognized the figure of the employee, denoted by the awkward posture and long limbs. 

“The Right Honorable’s on the line.” They mouthed.

She nodded stiffly and reached for the office phone on her desk, taking a moment to clear her throat while bringing the receiver up to her ear. 

_“Ah, Mister Secretary, a pleasure! You wouldn’t have happened to miss the news of Nigel Braithewaite, have you?”_

**Author's Note:**

> bordeaux and the employee aren’t my ocs btw LMAO i just threw them in for plot purposes™️


End file.
